Getting the most from our Unique Free Garden Design service

24th October 2023

Hello, Hello. Chris Lucas here,

Every week in our nursery I do a couple of dozen Free Garden Designs for our customers. I thought it was time to tell you why I’m qualified to do them.

In the early days

My history in gardening is that my mum was a fabulous gardener. And my mum and my dad over the years, built acres of gardens and us kids were basically the labourers. We helped do it all. We were instructed by them on what to do and how to mulch and how to do this and how to do that. My mum had beautiful garden design ideas. So I learned a lot from her.

Then when I was aged 7, I went door knocking for jobs I could do to earn some pocket money. I ended up several kilometres from home at the home of this retired female photographer. She took me on as a gardener. She was the first person who, after knocking on many doors and asking for gardening work, who didn’t tell me to go away! I worked for her every Saturday morning for 10 years till I was 17.

She was a cottage gardener – a style of garden many people know. This gave me a real passion for cottage gardens. Being retired she basically treated her cottage garden like a full-time job. Most days she’d be out there from 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning until 5 or 6 o’clock in the evening. She’d be planting new plants and weeding and doing things. I had to do a lot of the heavy work, lifting and dragging things, and some quite tedious jobs. She used to love English lawn daisies. I’d have to crawl across this giant expansive lawn planting English lawn daisies all through her lawn. But that gave me a very interesting garden.

Now, the first time I ever tried to design a garden was I was going to St. Joseph’s Regional College in Ferntree Gully. I was about 12 years old and they were getting the boys to do the garden there. They had a very, very tight budget. People were bringing odd plants from their homes and just sticking them in the ground. I remember looking at the garden and thinking there was no cohesion in the design.

So I went to the principal, Father O’Sullivan, and I offered to design the garden so that it would all kind of work together instead of just being bits and pieces here and there. I think he thought I didn’t know what I was doing or something like that, so he patted me on the back, thanked me and said he’d consider it. But it didn’t happen. So I never succeeded in my first attempt at doing a garden design. But I was still really quite keen to try and do something so that the school actually looked good to me. The gardens were really letting it down.

Of course, since then, I’ve become a plant retailer for many, many years. In the course of doing that, lots of people have asked me how to plant something up or how to do something. I’ve done it so often now. But I started off just offering our customers a little bit of design advice or ideas for gardens when I was helping some of my customers. Gradually it evolved to where people would start following me and tracking me down to get a design from me.

The difference between me and other garden designers

So then we started to formalise it all and I began to actually sit down with customers and start sketching out plans and designs for gardens.

Now I’ve been doing these garden designs for about 10 years now. So I’ve got lots and lots of customers who have now got very nice established gardens that I designed for them.

How it works now is that it has evolved into something quite different to how normal garden designs work. When you work with a regular garden designer, like a landscape designer, they will charge you several thousand dollars.

What happens is you employ them to come out to your house and look around the garden with you. They might sit down for a bit and discuss it with you, but in total they might spend maybe an hour or two there. They’ll measure it all up, and they might go away for 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks. When they come back, you might find you still have several thousand dollars to pay on top of what you have already paid in advance. Most of the design has been done by the designer on their own in an office somewhere.

When they arrive to present their design, they unroll it and they might say, look, we’re going to put yellow daisies here. And you might say, but I don’t like yellow daisies. Now they have to sort of defends their position. Oh you don’t like yellow daisies, they say. But look, yellow daisies are all the go these days and they’re the best. You’ve got to have yellow daisies. So people often end up with those expensive designs, that are something they don’t like or have some aspect to them that they don’t like.

My approach is very different. My philosophy is that the right garden for you is the garden that you love. So I design a lot of very different gardens. I do gardens that I might personally not like, but I do the garden for you, the customer. And it’s got the things in it, that you love. And anything you dislike well I won’t put it in there. Now the great thing that we have that is also different from other garden designers, is that I have access to an incredible 15,000 plants or so on our website. And I’ve got even more different things in the nursery.

The advantage of the range available at Hello Hello Plants

So I have an enormous range to choose from when designing for a customer. Therefore when I sit down with a customer I can do it all on the spot. You don’t have to wait weeks and weeks. With us it could take just 30 or 45 minutes or maybe a little bit longer. But it’s all very responsive. So if I say look, I think you should put yellow daisies all along here, and you say, but I hate yellow and I hate daisies, then I say, right, let’s scrap the yellow daisies!!

Then I talk to you about what you want. And you might say, look, I really love pink. And what I really love is those Japanese Anemones. And if I could have a big patch of those, I’d be really, really happy. So I work out how I might have to ship them around to get them in the shade or something like that. But I work out how to accommodate what people want and at the same time turn it into a really good design.

So what we do is to take your wishes and ideas and turn them into a garden design. But it’s all on the spot, it’s responsive. We look for you, the customer to say, I don’t like that, but gee I really like those plants over here.

Or you might bring a page from a magazine with you and say, I just love the look of the way this is in this magazine. What I’m looking for is something like this. Then I say, well, look, I can blend that in for you. But sometimes there are some technical things I have to take into consideration. Because I’m a nurseryman, I think I have a bit of an edge over a lot of garden designers because I know about soil types. People might say, look, I want to fill that front garden there with gardenias. I might say, well, you can do that, but with that heavy clay there, I reckon we’re going to have to change that.

So you’re going to have to spend some money and we’re going to have to change that over to a gardenia mix or otherwise it’ll be a disaster. Or they’ll say, look, I really love Hydrangeas and I want Hydrangeas everywhere. And I say, well, how much water have you got? Because Hydrangeas love water and you’ve really got to be watering them. So we might temper your need for Hydrangeas or make sure that we place them in a spot where they can easily be kept well-watered.

Giving the customer what they want

Basically my job is to find out what you the customer really wants and then deliver what you really want in a form that makes a cohesive kind of a landscape. At the same time, my main goal is I want people to come back into which they do all the time, come back to use in 2, 3, 4, 5 years’ time and say, that garden you did for me, the one with all the hedges and the magnolias, I love it. It’s fantastic. It’s really done well, and that’s the most important thing for me on the day.

Because if you say to me let’s fill this garden with gardenias and the soil’s all wrong, then a couple of years from now, you’re not going to be happy. So I would rather upset you today and say, look, you’ve got to either change the soil or change the plant. We can’t put gardenias in that rubbish soil. I do confront and challenge my customers a little bit because my No. 1 goal is for you to have something that you love. But it must work and it must be something which achieves your goals and be something that’s successful down the track.

Now for a lot of people, probably the most common thing they ask for is a low maintenance garden. Some people say, look, I want a really, low maintenance garden but then they ask you for things that really aren’t low maintenance. So I might have to say, well, look, you’re going to have to make a sacrifice here because these aren’t really a low maintenance plant. So if you really love them, then let’s put them in, but let’s do the rest of the garden low maintenance.

I always try to compromise and work with you to achieve your aims. My technical knowledge of plants and soils etc is very important because it allows me to make the right design exist. It makes it real, and it makes it workable.

Another I’ve discovered is that sometimes you have a customer who says they want natives and they want colour. But when I delve a little deeper, I might discover that they didn’t really want natives at all. What they wanted was something very tough and low maintenance. And their word for tough and low maintenance was native. So what they really wanted was a colourful mix of natives and other plants that were colourful and low maintenance. So there’s a lot of interpretation that I have to do because if I had of just gone with a design that was all natives, they wouldn’t have been entirely happy with it because it wouldn’t have really satisfied what they were actually after.

That’s one of the other advantages of doing our interactive garden designs. It means I can interpret what people are saying. Sometimes it can be difficult because they’ll say, everything’s got to be evergreen, but I want red maples. And you go, but they’re deciduous! So you have to sort through some of the contrary demands and work out what’s really important. So maybe you end up giving them a red tree that’s evergreen, or maybe you get them to accept that they’re going to have some red maples, but they’re going to be deciduous.

So if you want to come along for one of our Free Garden designs the best thing to do is to go online and book or you can ring up one of the staff and book. What we ask for is a deposit that gets credited against anything you might purchase on the day. So if you want your front garden done, you come in and whatever it costs for the plants for your front garden, then what you pay for the garden design comes off the cost of those plants. Say you pay $50 for the design, then when you buy some plants it comes off and that makes the garden design completely free. If you don’t buy anything then it’s going to cost you $50.

Get the best out of your garden design with us

Now how do you get the best out of your Garden Design service with us? Well what we are most hungry for is information. If you can bring along a rough drawing of your current garden or area with measurements, that’s fantastic. I love it because often we waste the most time trying to work out the shape of your garden from a couple of photos and from guessing at the measurements, like how far apart the fence posts are and how many there are. You don’t need to measure things down to the millimetre. Just go out and pace it and do nice big paces. Then you can tell us – look, it’s six paces long and it’s three paces wide.

The next thing I need to know is where does the sun rise and fall? Because to me it’s all about being technically correct. Then I like to see a soil sample. Take a photo of the soil, or dig up a bit of soil and bring it in. So I like to see a soil sample. And I like to see photographs of your garden, including your problem areas. So say, look, I’ve got this terrible big tap that’s there and I need to hide it. So you photograph that tap and I’ll look at the tap and I’ll figure out how you’re going to hide that tap.

So basically it’s a diagram, measurements, soil sample and photographs. But don’t overwhelm me with 64 photographs I won’t have time to study. A single photo won’t be enough. A nice number of photos is probably 10 or 12 photos of a good-sized garden.

Another thing you can do to get the best out of the design session is to go for a walk around your neighbourhood and pick out some garden design or something that you really like and photograph that. Or look at magazines or go online and bring in a page or a screenshot. That’s always a great help. I love it when people come in and say, look, Chris, what I really like is this sort of coastal look here. I like these plants with these fluffy tops on them. You don’t really have to know too much about them. If I look at a photo, I’ll probably know what type of plant it is.

It’s also important to have some idea of a budget for your garden. And make sure it’s a realistic budget for what you want to do. Also, please make sure if you are a couple that you both come along together, because if only one person comes along and they like yellow daisies but the other person doesn’t and I design a whole garden around them, when they get home, the design will just get thrown out. It’s best you both come along and whoever is the real decision maker needs to be there. This is also important when it comes to budget because often each person will have a completely different idea of budget than the other.

If you’re a young couple it can be helpful to bring in a parent, who might have a lot of gardening experience. So when I talk all the technical stuff, they can understand me and interpret it for you.

I've done every garden you can imagine, take advantage of it

When it comes to garden design, I have basically done everything. From people with a 20 acre property who wanted us to design the whole thing to someone who had just two or three little garden beds. I’ve designed a 400 metre driveway in a mix of casual and formal, a sort of fusion design. I’ve designed a children’s outdoor play area. I’ve had young couples come in who’ve bought established houses and wanted to rip the entire garden out and also young people who’ve bought new houses and want to start a garden from scratch.

We’ve had property developers come in with huge mansions who were very demanding in what they wanted and we’ve created fabulous front gardens for them. We’ve done courtyards and little balcony jobs where we’ve had to do it all with pot plants. They can be challenging and fun as you have to use mostly wind-hardy plants. One couple were in love with beautiful red and green Japanese Maples and that’s what they wanted but where they were it was a terrible wind tunnel and the Maples would have been smashed. So I used a different combination of plants and they loved it.

I’ve worked on gardens that were a bit empty and just needed a few new plants here and there to spruce it up a bit. I’ve done gardens on really tight budgets. One young couple had only $500 to spend on a native garden and it was surprising in the end what we could do for them. We also do gardens for “knockdown/rebuilds” where people might retain a couple of key plants from the original garden but then we build a whole new garden around them.

I’ve even done a garden for an old pensioner and all she had to spend was $20!! Yes, $20! I ended up getting some plants from my own garden to put in for her but I was really happy for the challenge and to do something nice for her. So don’t be scared if you have a really tight budget, Just be up front and tell us and we’ll make it work. We have some specials out the back that might just work for you.

I think the only time it really goes wrong is when somebody has a tight budget but they don’t tell me and then we go in too deep. Maybe they feel too embarrassed to say they can’t afford it or something like that. If I’m told upfront, I can work something out and really help people on a tight budget.

Getting your garden done

Now we don’t actually plant the garden. We can do the design and supply the plants, potting mixes, fertilisers, etc but we don’t do the actual planting of the plants. We can recommend people for you for this.

Now also don’t be afraid if you have NO idea of what you want. Just come in with your little drawing of the garden space, some measurements, a soil sample and we will go from there. You might have no idea of your vision or your style but we’ll work it out. Usually I will talk about what is the outcome you want from your garden. Do you want to improve the street appeal? Do you want a super low maintenance garden? You don’t have to even tell me what sort of plants you like. Just say look I love colour and I need it to look really nice when my friends and my family come around. Or I want it to look fabulous when I come home and pull up in the drive. Or I need something super low maintenance. Just tell me the outcome and I’ll give you the garden.

As a final thing, if you’re not really experienced with gardens at all, then as well as the design itself I might give you a little action plan of all steps you need to do in sequence. This can be really, really important. I might say, look, the first thing you should do is mark out this new garden, and then the next thing will be to spray it with weedkiller. Then I’ll give you the various steps to do. It gives you confidence to take it on and do what you have to do. You might discover you need to hire somebody to do one of the action steps. That’s the other thing that we provide with the garden design is when required an action plan.

In closing

So what’s really important about our garden designs isn’t so much that they’re free. While being free is a great thing because right at the moment, the price of everything’s going up and people are having trouble affording things. So free is a great feature, but that’s not the most important reason to choose our garden designs. The most important reason is that our garden designs are unique because we do each one individually for you. I work with your needs. Every garden I do is completely different to the last one. And most important, it’s the interaction that we have designing it together that makes it work best. That way you get a garden that you will really love.